Thomas Hardy 1840-1928

Thomas Hardy is a unique individual because he had long prosperous careers in two different fields. Hardy died at the age of 88, having completed two 30year careers, one as a novelist who wrote 14 novels, and one as a poet with over 1000 poems. Thomas was interested in the cosmic meaning of things. Early on, he trained to be an architect. He renovated churches but was not strong in faith. He would have liked to have been but his perception of the world and his life experiences would not allow him to maintain such a faith.

Hardy was generally pessimistic in his works; he believed that there is an irreconcilable disparity between what ought to be and what is. He wrote that humans have feeling but no powers, while the universe has power but no feelings; humans are imperfect while the universe is perfect, though inhuman can caring little about humans. This struck me as a very deep and profound way of viewing things but also as a pessimistic way. His novels were very dark and readers did not seem to like this. He then turned to poetry. Hardy almost never used the same structure in his poems twice. He liked to experiment. He thought it was important not to write poetry too well as not to distract the reader from a sense of reality. I feel the same way, so if this blog isn’t going too well than it is only because I agree with Hardy and do not want to distract my readers